A great concept hung up (heh) by a hackneyed use of “found-footage” film. Can we all agree that this “new, exciting” style is long past its sell-by date? Grade: C

What: On October 29th, 1993, a high school put on a production of “The Gallows”.  But a set malfunction — yep, those gallows — causes the death of a cast member.  Cut to October 28th, 2013, where the school decides to revisit this play.  Why?  Because they’re masochists.  Why care about something that happened in ’13?  Why indeed.

Why:  Are you already amping up for Halloween, and in desperate need of a fear fix at the multiplex?  Well, if you’re not too picky — and don’t need to care about the victim list in a horror film — this could fit the bill.  A few creepy moments thanks to quality cinematography and effects keeps The Gallows from really dropping the ball.  Plus, there’s a ton of sub-par horror garbage on Netflix lately, so hit up this film if you’re really jonesing for a fright.

How: An intriguing premise, but too muddled and enamored of its “found footage” format to really work.  Perhaps that’s due to two directors — Travis Cluff and Chris Lofing– helming the film.  That’d explain the lack of cohesion and disjointed feel of the plot.  But that’s not the only problem here.  There’s too much suspension of disbelief required to really dig into the horror that The Gallows tries to trot out.  A school would be allowed to perform a play that caused the death of a student years before?  Sure, because the school board and neighborhood folks would be fine with that.  A high school where unknown folks can wander in to sit and watch the kids for hours?  Of course, not creepy at all, and totally acceptable in this day and age.  But most of all; drama class is MANDATORY?  Um, as much as I’d love that, there’s no way in hell that’d fly.  The Gallows doesn’t bother to flesh out any backstory beyond “wanna see how that kid died?”, so gaping holes in plot and characterization soon become the only thing to focus on.

The actors deliver decent performances, but they’re really only tasked with running around and screaming a lot.  There’s no character development beyond “he has a crush on her”, “she’s his girlfriend”, “he’s a douche”.  Screenwriters  Cluff and Lofing (double duty!) write characters so boring, empty and vapid that there’s no reason to care about any of them, so much like the audience, these kids don’t have anything to sink into.  When these characters start dying, it’s just one step closer to the film being over, rather than any true terror. The bright spots in this film are Edd Lukas’ cinematography and the makeup FX by Rachel Jenkins and Michael Needham, which go a long way toward making this film look a whole lot better than it has any right to.

The scariest part of the film was the end, where there was just enough of a BOOGABOOGA scare to hint at a sequel, if this film makes any kind of money.  Brrr, now that’s scary.

Found-footage goes social media, with remarkably spooky results.  Though there’s really no build-up of the Big Haunting Bad beyond “she’s dead”, Unfriended lets you feed your voyeuristic tendencies and delivers genuine chills. Grade: B+

Poor Laura. You go to one backwoods kegger and really get sheisse-faced (almost literally in this case), and some douchecanoe posts your horrible night on YouTube.  What’s a girl to do?  Well, Laura killed herself.  And a year later, a group of her friends — who seem to be hopelessly addicted to Skype — find there’s an outsider in their group call.  An outsider with the subscriber info Laura used to use.  As the night progresses, these six friends go from annoyed to horrified…to dead.  Let’s just say I’ll never again play “Never Have I Ever” without getting a slight chill.

Yeah, this is another “found footage” genre flick.  But as it’s about modern high schoolers — and how technology can get hacked by The Beyond — it works here.  Excellent use of all the social media things; from Skype to Facebook, YouTube to Spotify, they’re used just like you’d use ’em at home.  Director Levan Gabriadze gets a special high-five for his use of Spotify as voice/playlist-from-beyond. Nice touch.  There’s also a nice touch to the film editing, with it’s quick-cuts and constant rapid flashes from one Skype account to another, from Skype to YouTube to Spotify to Facebook and it’s rapidly growing comment feeds.

Two things thew me about this film.  The first?  Laura herself.  Earlier press info had said that Laura was “a vicious bully” before her suicide.  But there’s nothing about the kind of person Laura was before the video, or after.  She’s simply someone these kids knew and were friends with, who had a horrible video posted about her when she was at her weakest.  Perhaps some editing cut the negative view of the victim in order to make the kids that bite it seem more deserving of their fate?  Not sure, but I kept waiting to see more about who Laura was…to no avail. [Note: I notice all mention of Laura being a bully before her shaming has been cut from IMDb.  So perhaps this was indeed a change of direction for the storyline.]

The second?  The complete lack of tech savvy behavior on the part of these Generation Z kids.  They click open JPG images sent from unknown sources, don’t know how to clear Skype, and install strange downloads.  Heck, according to the backstory Laura had been dead for a year, and yet nobody had memorialized her Facebook page?  That helps the story along, but didn’t help me get lost in the moment.  Instead, I kept thinking “why didn’t anyone do [X]?”  And nobody ever thought of ditching their laptops and running over to [X friend who just drew the death short straw] rather than simply watching said friend die on camera?  Of course, I could say the same thing about stupid teens in 80s horror flicks — going outside in the dark when you know there’s a killer?  In your underwear? — so perhaps I’m just being curmudgeonly.  Get off my lawn!

Kudos to screenwriter Nelson Greaves (Sleepy Hollow) for being able to combine cyberbullying, teen suicide and straight-up horror in such an effective, creepy way.  But what really resonated with me was the way Unfriended played with who the Big Bad really was.  Laura might possibly have been a Queen Bee when she was alive (and is definitely a force to be reckoned with after death), but as the story unfolds her former friends end up thoughtlessly turning on each other as things get progressively worse.  Who is the real evil entity?  Perhaps not Laura…